It is a cold and snowy night. The main street is deserted.
The only things moving are swirls of snow.
As I lift the mailbox door, I feel its cold iron.
There is a privacy I love in this snowy night.
Driving around, I will waste more time.
–Robert Bly
Courtesy of Whiskey River.
We did not come to remain whole.
We came to lose our leaves like the trees,
The trees that are broken
And start again, drawing up on great roots;
(Source: litverve)
![“I dislike the word ‘craft,’ when we talk of poetry. ’Craft’ suggest an inanimate object, as when we say a carpenter crafts a chest of drawers. But somebody’s already made the wood. So therefore, thinking of it … my idea is this: perhaps making the poem from the beginning involves three separate areas of experience. The first experience … is interior. When the poet realizes for the first time … when he touches for the first time, something far inside of him. It’s connected with what the ancients called The Mysteries, and it’s wrong to talk of it very much. Some poets have the experience very early. Wordsworth said that he had experienced it when he was seven or eight years old. And others when they’re fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. Whitman, interestingly enough, did not have this experience until he was about thirty-seven years old. Before that, he was writing merely well-crafted newspaper verse. Then, when he touched another center inside—or when he—or you can use the metaphor of finding a well if you want—or you could talk of it as breaking through an ego wall but I don’t think it’s as useful—if any person comes near that experience he or she will never forget it the rest of his [or her] life. If he [or she] writes poetry it will come from that … You can talk of that as an experience. We could call this stage wholly interior.”
—Robert Bly, from his “Craft Interview” which was conducted in the Spring, 1972, and appears in Talking All Morning (University of Michigan Press, 1990), Poets on Poetry Series.
*Note: To be continued with descriptions of poetry writing’s second and three stages of experience.
Thank you, apoetreflects.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5zr5aHbJH1qe0r71o1_500.jpg)
“I dislike the word ‘craft,’ when we talk of poetry. ’Craft’ suggest an inanimate object, as when we say a carpenter crafts a chest of drawers. But somebody’s already made the wood. So therefore, thinking of it … my idea is this: perhaps making the poem from the beginning involves three separate areas of experience. The first experience … is interior. When the poet realizes for the first time … when he touches for the first time, something far inside of him. It’s connected with what the ancients called The Mysteries, and it’s wrong to talk of it very much. Some poets have the experience very early. Wordsworth said that he had experienced it when he was seven or eight years old. And others when they’re fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. Whitman, interestingly enough, did not have this experience until he was about thirty-seven years old. Before that, he was writing merely well-crafted newspaper verse. Then, when he touched another center inside—or when he—or you can use the metaphor of finding a well if you want—or you could talk of it as breaking through an ego wall but I don’t think it’s as useful—if any person comes near that experience he or she will never forget it the rest of his [or her] life. If he [or she] writes poetry it will come from that … You can talk of that as an experience. We could call this stage wholly interior.”
—Robert Bly, from his “Craft Interview” which was conducted in the Spring, 1972, and appears in Talking All Morning (University of Michigan Press, 1990), Poets on Poetry Series.
*Note: To be continued with descriptions of poetry writing’s second and three stages of experience.
Thank you, apoetreflects.
“There’s a skin or hide between ourselves and our inner being. And in the West that skin is very thick. Inside us there’s a sea and that sea is your inner life, your spiritual life, and your sexual impulses - everything you’ve gotten from the memory stores of evolution. Then there’s the outside world made of buildings and automobiles. And these two worlds can’t rub against each other. It’s too painful. Therefore you develop a hide exactly like a cow develops a hide. You don’t want her guts to rub against the barn.”
—Robert Bly spoken to Lewis Hyde in an interview taken from Robert Bly In This World.
Photo by Luke Storms taken somewhere in India when I was there in 2005. Text courtesy of the exceptional curator at The Beauty We Love.
You are alone. Then there’s a knock
On the door. It’s a word. You
Bring it in. Things go
OK for a while. But this word
Has relatives. Soon
They turn up. None of them work.
They sleep on the floor, and they steal
Your tennis shoes.
You started it; you weren’t
Content to leave things alone.
Now the den is a mess, and the
Remote is gone.
That’s what being married
Is like. You never receive your
Wife only, but the
Madness of her family.
Now see what’s happened?
Where is your car? You won’t
Be able to find
The keys for a week.
—Robert Bly. with thanks to The Beauty We Love
I’d like to have spent my life making
Clothespins. Nothing would be harmed,
Except some pines, probably on land
I owned and would replant. I’d see
My work on clotheslines near some lake,
Up north on a day in October,
Perhaps twelve clothespins, the wood
Still fresh, and a light wind blowing.
I have spent many years trying to recover a common language, one that can cross the distance between people.
There are more like us. All over the world
There are confused people, who can’t remember
The name of their dog when they wake up, and
people
Who love God but can’t remember where
He was when they went to sleep. It’s
All right. The world cleanses itself this way.
A wrong number occurs to you in the middle
Of the night, you dial it, it rings just in time
To save the house. And the second-story man
Gets the wrong address, where the insomniac lives,
And he’s lonely , and they talk, and the thief
Goes back to college. Even in graduate school,
You can wander into the wrong classroom,
And hear great poems lovingly spoken
By the wrong professor. And you find your soul
And greatness has a defender, and even in death
you’re safe
— Robert Bly
(from Death Deconstructed)
There’s a boy in you about three
Years old who hasn’t learned a thing for thirty
Thousand years. Sometimes it’s a girl.
This child had to make up its mind
How to save you from death. He said things like:
“Stay home. Avoid elevators. Eat only elk.”
You live with this child, but you don’t know it.
You’re in the office, yes, but live with this boy
At night. He’s uninformed, but he does want
To save your life. And he has. Because of this boy
You survived a lot. He’s got six big ideas.
Five don’t work. Right now he’s repeating them to you .
